by Ruth Rendell
Linthea, in the kitchen making Chicken Maryland, talked about the murder practically, logically, like a character in a detective story. “If Brian Kotowsky did kill her, he can’t have gone straight to find this Dean, because he left your house at a quarter to eleven and she didn’t leave the Grand Duke till ten minutes later. So they’re saying he hung about in the street on a freezing cold night on the chance she’d come that way and at that time. When she did come they didn’t go home to quarrel but quarrelled in a pitch-black mews where he killed her. And that’s ridiculous.”
“We don’t know what they’re saying.”
“The police always think murdered wives have been murdered by their husbands, and considering what I see in my work every day almost, I know why.”
He thought how Helen would have spoken of it, with intuition, using her rich imagination to clothe that night and the players in its drama. But Linthea looked coolly and prosaically at things as he did. Linthea had more in common with him than Helen had. Strange that the girl gifted with the delicate perception, the passionate imagination, should look so cool and fair, the calm and practical one so exotic. Tonight Linthea’s long black hair hung loose down her back. She wore a heavy gold chain about her neck which threw a yellow gleam up against her throat and chin. He wondered about that dead husband of hers and whether she now lived a celibate life.
Later, when they had eaten and she had exhausted the subject of the Kotowskys, completed her analysis of times and circumstances and likelihood, he felt an overpowering urge to confide in her about Helen. But that brought him back to where he had been once before. Can you, if you want to make love to a woman, confess to her your present, strong, and angry love for another woman? Not certainly, with her son in the room, pressing you to a game of Scrabble.
“You’re keeping him up late,” he said at last.
“He’s on half-term. No school tomorrow, no work for me.” She had a merry laugh, evoked by very little, as some West Indians have. “Scrabble’s good for him, he can’t spell at all. How will you grow up,” she said, hugging the boy, “to be a big important doctor like Anthony if you can’t spell?”
So they played Scrabble till midnight when Leroy went to bed and Linthea said very directly, “I shall send you home now, Anthony. You must be fresh for your psychopaths in the morning.”
He didn’t feel very fresh on Tuesday morning because he had awakened at four and been unable to sleep again. All day he wondered if a letter would be waiting for him when he got home, though he refused to give way to the impulse that urged him to go home early and find out. But when he returned at five there was no letter. No post had come that day for the occupants of 142 Trinity Road and the table was bare. So, on the following morning, beginning now to feel real anxiety, he waited at home until the post came, and at nine he took it in himself. Two letters, one for Li-li, one for Winston. It was now two whole weeks since he had heard from Helen.
Two of her letters couldn’t have gone astray. He considered breaking her rule and phoning her at work. She was assistant to the curator of a marine art museum. But why give her what she wanted, a lover content to hang on, playing the amour courtois game, while she gave him nothing? No, he wouldn’t phone. And maybe he wouldn’t phone on the last Wednesday of the month either. By that time, anyway, he might have managed to console himself. Linthea, he thought, Linthea who had no ties, who lived in and worked for a society he understood, who wasn’t effete with poetry and dream and metaphor and a jellylike sensitivity that melts at a hard touch. Above all, this mustn’t affect his thesis. He had begun to write it in earnest and it was going well. Now, having dealt in depth with the findings of various psychometric tests, he wrote:
In the survey it was suggested that the majority of psychopaths feared their own aggression and were as guilt- and anxiety-ridden about their acts as were the normal subjects. In their manner of relating to female and authority figures, a greater disturbance was found in psychopaths than in non-psychopaths, but whereas more guilt feelings were present in the former, further analysis shows that the guilt feelings of psychopaths were indicative rather of their difficult and disagreeable situation than of true remorse. The psychopath, when offered a choice between selfish forms of conduct and those which seem self-denying and are therefore socially acceptable, may be shrewd enough to choose the latter. When obliged to be guided solely by his own judgment, his choice is directed primarily by personal need….
A tap on the door, discreet and somehow insinuating, interrupted Anthony. Arthur Johnson stood outside, dressed as usual in one of his silver-sheened suits and a shirt as white as that in a detergent commercial. He gave a small, deprecating cough.
“I do most sincerely apologise for this intrusion, but I have to trouble you about the little matter of the rent. Your—er, first weekly payment in advance falls due tomorrow.”
“Oh, sure,” said Anthony. “Will a cheque do?”
“Admirably, admirably.”
While Anthony hunted out his chequebook which was sandwiched between Sokolov’s The Conditioned Reflex and Stein’s Role of Pleasure in Behaviour, Arthur Johnson, in a finicky manner, waved at him a small red rent book and a brown envelope on which was printed with a touching attention to detail: Mr. Anthony Johnson, Room 2, 142 Trinity Road, London W15 6HD.
“If you would be good enough to place your cheque inside your rent book each Friday and the book inside this little envelope?
Then I will either collect it or you may leave it on the hall table.”
Anthony nodded, wrote his cheque.
“Thank goodness, the police have ceased to trouble us.”
“They haven’t troubled me at all yet,” said Anthony.
“Of course, there can be no doubt in anyone’s mind that Mr. Kotowsky is guilty. He’s known to be in South America but he will be extradited.”
“Oh, rubbish,” said Anthony rather more roughly than he intended. “And there’s plenty of doubt in my mind. I don’t believe for a moment he did it.”
Arthur had been rather perturbed during the previous week to observe that on two mornings the post had been taken in by someone else. But that hadn’t happened since Saturday—thanks to his watching from his living-room window for the postman to appear round the corner of Camera Street, and taking care to be down in the hall in good time. In any case, no further mauve-grey envelopes had arrived. The woman wouldn’t write again. She had now been twice rebuffed and she wouldn’t risk a further snub. Tuesday, November 19, and Wednesday, November 20, went by. Those were crucial days, but they brought Anthony Johnson only a letter from York from his mother. Arthur felt more relaxed and peaceful than he had done since the night of November 5, although it gave him a certain bitterness to notice, now when it was too late and unimportant, that twice this week already no light had fallen from the window of Room 2 on to the courtyard in the evenings.
Friday, November 22, dawned cold and wet. Arthur saw Anthony Johnson leave the house at eight-thirty and Winston Mervyn follow him five minutes later. Then Li-li Chan emerged. She stood at the front gate under a red pagoda umbrella, scanning the cars that turned into Trinity Road from Magdalen Hill. Then the front door slammed with a Dean-like crash and Arthur heard her platform soles clumping up the stairs. He opened his door and put it on the latch.
Li-li was on the phone.
“You say you come at eight-thirty. You are oversleeping? Why don’t you buy alarm clock? I am late for my work. You would not oversleep if I sleep with you?” Arthur clicked his tongue at that one. “Perhaps I will, perhaps I won’t. Of course I love you. Now come quick before I get sack from my job.”
It was five to nine before the car came for her, an ancient blue van this time. Arthur went down to take in the post. There was nothing on the mat, so presumably the postman hadn’t yet come. But as he turned back into the hall, he saw that the table which on the previous night had been bare even of vouchers, now held a pile of envelopes. The post must have come early and while he was l
istening to Li-li’s phone conversation. She had taken it in herself.
His own new Barclaycard, two circulars for Winston Mervyn and—unbelievable but real—a mauve-grey envelope postmarked Bristol. She had written again. Was there no stopping her? Arthur held the envelope in his fingertips, held it at arm’s length, as if it might explode. Well, he had decided no Bristol letter must ever be allowed to reach Anthony Johnson and that decision should stand. Better burn the thing immediately as he had burned the last. And yet … A thrill of fear touched him. Li-li had taken that letter in, might or might not have noticed it. But how could he be sure she hadn’t? If Anthony Johnson began to wonder why no letter had come for him for three weeks and started asking around—following up, in fact, H’s suggestion, though it had never been communicated to him—then Li-li would remember.
Again he steamed open the envelope.
Darling Tony, What have I done? Why have you rejected me without a word? You begged me to make up my mind and let you know as soon as I could. I did let you know by the Tuesday. I told you I was willing to leave Roger as soon as I heard from you and that I’d come to you. That was November 5 and now it’s November 21. Please tell me what I did and where I went wrong. Is it because I said I couldn’t promise to love you for ever? God knows, I’ve wished a thousand times I’d never written those words. Or is it because I said I hadn’t told Roger? I would have told him, you must believe me, as soon as I’d heard from you.
I think I’ve lost you. In so far as I can think rationally at all, I think I shall never see you again. Tony, you would have pity on me if you knew what black despair I feel, as if I can’t go on another day. I would even come to you, only I’m terrified of your anger. You said there are other women in the world. I am afraid to come and find you with another girl. It would kill me. You said I was the only woman you had ever felt real passion for, apart from wanting them as friends or to sleep with. You said you thought “in love” was an old-fashioned meaningless expression, but you understood it at last because you were in love with me. These feelings can’t have been destroyed because I wrote tactless silly things in my first letter. Or weren’t they ever sincere?
Roger has gone to Scotland on business. He’s to be there at least a fortnight and wanted me to go with him, only I can’t get time off from work till next Wednesday. Tony, while I’m alone here, please will you phone me at home? At any time during the weekend—I won’t leave the house—or next week in the evenings. I beg you to. If I ever meant anything to you in the past, if only for what we once were to each other, I beg you to phone me. If it’s only to say you don’t want me, you’ve changed your mind, I want to hear you saying it. Don’t be so cruel as to let me wait by the phone all the weekend. I can take it—I think—if you say you’ve changed. What I can’t take is this awful silence.
But, Tony, if you don’t phone, and I have to face the possibility that you won’t, I shan’t write again. I don’t know what I shall do, but what little pride I have left will keep me from throwing myself at you. So whatever happens now, this is my last letter. H.
That, Arthur thought, rereading the last sentence, was at any rate something to be thankful for. But if Anthony Johnson saw this letter he’d be on the phone at once, tonight. And in their conversation it would all come out, the dates she’d written and the things she’d written. Yet Anthony Johnson must see this letter because Li-li Chan had already seen it.
By now it was almost twenty past nine. Arthur considered not going to work, phoning Mr. Grainger and saying he’d got this gastric bug that was going about. He seemed to see Auntie Gracie loom before him, shaking her head at his deceit and his cowardice. Besides, he’d have to go back tomorrow or the next day. Shivering as if he were really ill, he dragged on his raincoat and took his umbrella from the rack in the hall. What to do with H’s letter? Take it to work and try to think of some solution. He could come home at lunchtime, anyway, in good time to restore it if he could find no alternative but to deliver it and himself into Anthony Johnson’s hands.
He was late, of course, late for the first time in years. Drizzle speckled the office window, then rain gushed in sheets against the glass. In a wretched state that was intensely nervous and at the same time apathetic, Arthur opened Grainger’s post, though he felt he never wanted to see another envelope as long as he lived. The handwriting of potential customers who wanted roofs retiled and central heating installed danced before his eyes. He typed two replies, full of errors, but at last there was nothing for it but to take H’s letter out of his briefcase and scrutinise it once more.
Should he take a chance on Li-li’s having failed to notice it? The chances were she hadn’t noticed it among so much other stuff. Since there seemed no alternative, this was a risk he would have to take. Destroy the letter now and hope Anthony Johnson either wouldn’t bother to ask her or that she wouldn’t remember. He had closed his fist over the two sheets of flimsy paper when he realised, with a new terror, that even if Anthony Johnson didn’t get this latest of H’s letters, he would still discover the injury that had been done him. For on Wednesday, November 27, next Wednesday, the last Wednesday in the month, he would phone H as he always did and the whole thing would come out.
Arthur ground two sheets of paper into his typewriter and struggled with a reply to a Mr. P. Coleman, who wanted Grainger’s advice on the conversion of his nineteenth-century coachhouse into a dwelling for his mother-in-law. H’s letter would have to go back to 142 Trinity Road by one and it was eleven now. He’d brazen it out, that was all. He’d deny in his most severe manner ever having touched Anthony Johnson’s correspondence. Useless to keep turning things over in his mind like this when there was no help for it. He glanced at the sheet on which he was typing and saw he had put an H instead of a P before Coleman and “convict” instead of “convert.” The paper was torn out and a fresh sheet inserted. Anthony Johnson would go at once to the police. The police would stop hunting for Brian Kotowsky and start thinking seriously about Arthur Johnson, who never went out at night but who had been out that night; who was a resident of Kenbourne Vale at the time of the murder of Maureen Cowan and at the time of the murder of Bridget O’Neill; who had unaccountably lied to them.… He flexed his hands to try and prevent their trembling.
A mammoth effort, a mammoth concentration, and a passable letter advising Mr. Coleman to consult a certain firm of Kenbourne Vale architects had been achieved. But as soon as he had done it and read it through, it struck him that if this reply came to the notice of Mr. Grainger he would be very displeased indeed. Mr. Grainger would expect him, while possibly mentioning the architects, to suggest that Grainger’s themselves would be happy to carry out the work. The displeasure of the whole world, of everyone who mattered, loomed before him. He gave a shuddering sigh. Another, and very different, letter must be composed.
Fresh sheets of paper were in the machine before Arthur realized the significance of the words he had spoken under his breath. Another, and very different, letter must be composed.…
16
————
For her letters H always used the same flimsy paper Grainger’s used for their carbon copies. And she used a similar typewriter to Arthur’s. Suppose he himself were to type a letter to Anthony Johnson and insert it in that mauve-grey envelope? The envelope would be the original one, the postmark and its date correct, and it could be placed on the hall table in good time for Anthony Johnson to find it. Only the contents would be different.
Arthur, who had spent half a day composing with fear and extreme care that note of apology, was appalled by the magnitude and the danger of the task. And yet the letter wouldn’t have to be a long one. His purpose, already half formulated, was to make it as short as possible. He could imitate H’s hysterical style—he had seen enough of it—and make the sort of errors she made, not depressing that key properly so that it made an eight instead of an apostrophe, depressing this one too long so that the second as well as the initial letter came out as upper ca
se. And he could make the H with his own blue-black ballpoint pen.
He put two sheets of flimsy into the typewriter. The date first: November 21, and the O of November a capital as well as the N. Darling Tony—no, she wouldn’t call him darling for the kind of letter he meant to write. What would she call him? The only personal letters Arthur had written in his whole life were to a certain cousin of Auntie Gracie’s who had sent him five shilling postal orders on his birthdays. Dear Uncle Alfred, Thank you very much for the postal order. I am going to save the money up in my money box. I had a nice birthday. Auntie Gracie gave me a new school blazer. With love from Arthur. Dear Tony? In the end, not having the least idea whether people ever wrote that way, Arthur typed Tony. Just Tony.
How to begin? She was always asking him to forgive her. Forgive me. That was good, convincing. I’m sorry, he went on, taking care that an eight instead of an apostrophe appeared, not to have written to you before as I promised. Why hadn’t she written? I knew you would be angry if I said I couldn’t make up my mind. Good, he was doing well. But he must get on to the nub of it. I have made it up now and I am going to stay with Roger. I am his wife and it is my duty to stay with him. Arthur didn’t like that much, it wasn’t H’s style, but he couldn’t better it and still make her say what he meant her to say. There ought to be some love stuff. He racked his brains for something from the television or from one of those old films. I never really loved you. It was just infatuation. Now for the most important thing, the point of writing this letter that was primarily designed to put an end to all further communication between H and Anthony Johnson.
